A Bad Day for the Enemy, by Daniel Taylor

A book written by our eldest son, Daniel, when he was about seven years old. (We don’t know the exact date, but clues in the text indicate that it was written when he was playing a lot of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but before he started playing X-Wing Alliance, so around 2005.)

For some reason, he made the book absolutely tiny — about 4 cm square, as you can see from the staple in the front cover. In case you can’t decode the artwork, that’s an X-Wing shooting at a TIE Fighter at the top; below is a Star Destroyer, and to its left a Super Star Destroyer; the bottom row, from left to right, shows an Imperial Shuttle, a TIE Bomber and a TIE Advanced.

The writing is a little unclear in places, and the spelling a little eccentric, so I will translate. Here we go:

Once a Star Destroyer sucked Princess Leia’s ship into it. She was captured! Then Luke Skywalker came. He was flying in an X-Wing. He had a squadron of them. There were also a squadron of …

… B-Wings, they are very powerful!!!!! They disabled the whole Star Destroyer!!! They did it with their ion cannons. The X-Wings destroyed all the dark ships and then all the B-Wings and all the …

X-Wings all blow up the Star Destroyer by all shooting it and gradually, but oh so gradually, the hull went to zero and that means that it explodes!!!! Then a terrible dreadnought came to capture Princess Leia, who just …

… escaped the mighty explosion of the star-ship. It let out 200 fighters that are all gunboats. The gunboats disabled Princess Leia’s ship!! The B-Wings blow up the dreadnought. The escort trans[ports] nearly docked with the princess’s ship but the B-Wings just …

… managed to blow [picture of TIE Fighter] them up just in time and Princess Leia’s ship got to the navigation buoy and got into hyperspace. Unfortunately a Super Star Destroyer entered the area!! Luckily its …

… shield was already disabled so it could easily be disabled and then destroyed!! There were still a lot of fighters but they could EASILY …

… be destroyed. They were quickly destroyed and the rebels had been victorious! [Picture of an X-Wing and a B-Wing flying away from the explosion.]

As best I can decode the back-cover art, it’s a Super Star Destroyer, TIE Fighter and B-Wing (top row), then a TIE Advanced and something I can’t make out at all. Below these is, I think, a Mon Calamari Cruiser, and finally a globe of some kind under fire from an X-Wing.

2 responses to “A Bad Day for the Enemy, by Daniel Taylor”

Better than the Prequels! More action than the Battle of Hoth! More fighters in one scene than that one, you know the one where the Millennium Falcon first approaches the Death Star in ROTJ. Neeeeooowwnng pew pew pew.

I think the “something I can’t make out” looks like a partially destroyed Tie Bomber, spinning round in it’s final death throws. The globe is another Tie fighter eating quad linked laser death: using “X” twice, and shunt all the power to the lasers with “F9”.

X-Wing and Tie Fighter were awesome games. One of the main authors was Ed Kilham – whom I worked with him for most of my 10 years at EA. The day I arrived I sat next to him and said “Wait… you’re Ed Kilham, as in *the* Ed Kilham who wrote X-Wing and Tie Fighter?” He was slightly embarrassed and said his favourite game he wrote was RoboSport.